


Talisman

by Mireille



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2004-06-17
Updated: 2004-06-17
Packaged: 2018-08-16 15:09:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,014
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8106973
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mireille/pseuds/Mireille
Summary: Giles, after "Band Candy."





	

**Author's Note:**

> Does contain some references to the canonical Giles/Joyce, as well as Giles/Ethan, but this is purely a Giles piece, and I didn't really feel it merited a ship label.

The entire point of having the cigarettes in his desk was that he wasn't going to smoke them. The entire point of replacing the packet every few months was that stale cigarettes weren't much of a temptation, and he wanted there to be temptation. He didn't want to not smoke because it wasn't convenient for him to; he wanted to do it because it was something he had consciously chosen not to do. 

He still drank--to excess, on occasion, though not that often these days. He did magic, occasionally, though only as part of his duties as a Watcher. And he wasn't quite foolish enough to leave illicit drugs sitting in his desk drawer. So it had to be the cigarettes that served as a tangible reminder of what he'd decided to leave behind. 

He'd kept a packet in his desk drawer for twenty years now. In the early eighties, the temptation had been much greater; he'd taken the packet out regularly, even got as far as opening it, once or twice. Once, he'd even lit one of them. But he hadn't ever smoked any of them, at least not until now. 

Now, he'd smoked them. If he'd had anything else in the house to smoke, he'd have done that, as well, he was quite certain. The drinking wasn't much of a shock, though he generally used a glass these days, and what he'd done with Joyce....

Well. Joyce Summers was a very attractive woman, though the fact that she was Buffy's mother would have stopped him from pursuing those thoughts under normal circumstances. He certainly wouldn't have broken into a shop to steal a coat for her, even if she wouldn’t bring complications to his life. And he wouldn't have actually had sex with her on the hood of a police car, either. That wasn't his way. 

And yet he was more troubled by the cigarettes, he realized. What he'd done with Joyce was one thing--they'd discussed it over the telephone when Buffy was out on patrol, and they'd both agreed that they didn't want to pursue things further, and that they should probably never talk about it again. And besides, it wasn't a symbol of anything. It didn't represent anything that he had spent twenty years trying to put behind him, unlike the cigarettes.

It didn't represent everything that had just come rushing back to him last night, courtesy of the enchanted candy. 

He hadn't reverted to his teenaged years, he realized, no matter whether that was how Buffy summarized things or not. When he'd actually been seventeen, he'd been fairly quiet, and thoughtful, and not inclined to break shop windows, or have sex with random women, or anything else. 

Oh, no, he'd been about twenty-one under the influence of that candy. The height of his hideous irresponsibility. The height of his arrogance. The height of his stupidity. 

And right now, he was having to tell himself that there was no way on earth that Ethan would have known he'd have eaten the candy. That this was part of a much larger plan, the result of the mayor's schemes, and nothing at all to do with him. He'd just been caught up in it, like Joyce and Principal Snyder and a large percentage of the other adults in Sunnydale. 

That was quite obvious, he decided, because if it had been aimed at him at all, then he wouldn't have remembered quite how much he loathed Ethan these days. Ethan wouldn't have wanted his flashback to his younger years to be restricted to petty larceny and public sex. At least not public sex involving Joyce Summers, anyway, Giles thought wryly. 

So this wasn't about him. And that was rather comforting, he supposed, because as little as he liked the thought of Ethan contracting himself out as a participant in the mayor's scheme to... do whatever it was he was trying to do, he liked the thought that Ethan had a particular vendetta against him even less, because Ethan, whose attention span was generally rather short, could be amazingly single-minded when he was angry at someone. 

So, not about him at all, and that was quite the relief. Ethan was part of the life he'd left behind, the only part he'd left behind as totally as he'd left the cigarettes. The cigarettes just made a much better symbol; he couldn't exactly keep Ethan around as a reminder and a test of his willpower. 

Although, given the last few times he'd had any contact with Ethan, it wouldn't be terribly difficult to resist temptation. And that was comforting as well; he wasn't reacting to Ethan with anything but anger and occasional flashes of disgust, and that was a reassurance that he wasn't backsliding. It had simply been the candy. It had affected him just the same as it had affected everyone else, and now that it was out of his system, he was back to normal. 

He was completely over that phase of his life-- _all_ of it. And this had had nothing to do with him; none of what Ethan had done had had anything to do with him, not really. Ethan had come to Sunnydale because there was a Hellmouth here, and he'd enchanted the chocolate because the mayor had paid him to, and it was all sheer coincidence that he had been in Sunnydale. Ethan probably hadn't even known he was here when he'd come to open that costume shop. 

And that was, as he'd said, comforting and reassuring and the way things were supposed to be. And tomorrow, on his way home from work, he'd stop by and replace his cigarettes, so they could sit in their customary place in his desk, the symbol of everything he used to be and hoped to never be again.

But tonight, there was one last cigarette in the packet, and he was going to smoke it, and listen to some of his old albums, and think about all the things that might have been, if the world had been a different place.


End file.
